


And Shame The Devil

by garnettrees



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: BAMF Charles, Calm Down Erik, Canon Jewish Character, Charles Always Says the Absolute Worst Thing He Could Possibly Say, Charles Being Concerned, Chess Metaphors, Dom Charles, Dubious Consent, Erik Has Feelings, Erik Logic Is The Best Logic, Erik is not a Happy Bunny, Erotic Games, Feeding Kink, Forced Orgasm, Grooming, Hand Feeding, Honestly Charles What Are You Thinking, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Makeup Sex, Making Out, Mind Control, Oral Sex, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Political arguements, Porn with Feelings, Post-DOFP, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Erik, Psychic Bond, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Service Kink, Service Submission, Service Top, Smitten Erik, Soul Bond, Stop Dropping Stadiums on People Erik, Sub Erik, Subspace, Telepathic Bondage, Telepathic Sex, arguing as foreplay, philosophical porn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-04-30 21:32:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5180525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/garnettrees/pseuds/garnettrees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Charles' strange pardon in D.C., Magneto's primary goal is to lie low and educate himself on the political changes during the time he lost. But no man endures a decade of confinement without side-effects, and Erik is not prepared to handle his own reactions, nor can he fathom Charles' intentions when the telepath summons him back to the only place he has ever been tempted to call home.</p><p>(Or, two men both bloody-minded and still in love, and a talk-- among other things-- ten years delayed.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [valancysnaith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/valancysnaith/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know I have sixteen-zillion WIPs (well, the count is maybe off by one or two ^_~), but this idea grabbed me and would not let go. I am officially blaming this (in all the best ways) on **valancysnaith** , who wanted some mind-control to ensure Charles and Erik to have _words_ about a certain person's stadium-dropping in DoFP. Erik was just _itching_ for Charles to take over during the whole film-- the only time he actually smiles is when he's pointing out that 'I couldn't disobey you if I wanted to'. *massive eye-roll* She also wanted Magneto called out on his 'mutant and proud, oh wait unless you're a telepath' double-standard. All negative blame should be placed on yours truly.
> 
> Mostly emo!mind-control porn in this chapter, actual porn to follow. 
> 
> If you've read Night Ocean, I don't think I need to tell you that this bus is on a non-stop trip to the Special Hell. ^_~
> 
>  **Trigger Warnings:** Obvs, mind-control. Darkish!(or at least slightly irresponsible)Charles. Post traumatic stress disorder from everybody. Flash backs, disorientation, and readjustment difficulty typical of those suffering long-term solitary confinement. Charles dealing with his own internalized ableism. Vague Holocaust references, Shaw being a complete creep, slight references to animal torture (again, Shaw).  
>  **Additional Warnings(/Enticements?)** : Service!Top, feeding, grooming, dom/sub behavior, emotional manipulation, Erik's fantasies, Erik's Logic[™], and much more to come. (You know, that kitchen sink. ^_~)

_"Tell the truth and shame the devil."_  
-traditional

 

 

Erik begins his first night as the world's most wanted international security threat near an abandoned tin shack, somewhere just west of the Missouri-Kansas border. He is a free man; no longer contained by fearful humans or curtailed by Charles' conventions of 'ethical' combat. ' _At large_ ', as they say. This is a pleasing turn of duplicitous meanings in English, and Magneto finds he quite likes the phrase. It encompasses the breadth of sky he so carefully traversed from Washington DC, and so much more. How many humans, restless in their beds, will know fear for the first time tonight? True fear, as an entity itself-- the constricting coils of 'anywhere, at any moment'.

This country in particular, with its careful pretenses to dynasty and legitimacy, its odd insistence on its exemption and hard-headed naiveté will be discomforted. How shocked the nation had been, in the wake of Kennedy; as if assassination had just been invented, though even their history yielded a few examples of its own. Would that they knew the truth which-- like only the most extreme of conspiracy theories-- reveals that the puppeteers never truly change. Names and faces come and go, but the drive does not, nor its careful chalked outline. The tailored void, just waiting for the next Herr Docktor. 

The land surrounding the shack and its little cluster of trees is wide, seemingly endless. The roads are one-lane strips of dirt, cutting a patchwork of green and yellow-brown from above. On the ground, such gradations vanish, leaving a sea of grass and silence. The wind is loud, not due to its own strength but because the sound of it moving through the tall shoots is a beast itself. Stalking, as the night dips down over the last bands of color on the horizon-- and restless. It, too, wanders abroad and unhindered.  
Unlike Erik, it has never known prison, or exhaustion, or dismay.

Lehnsherr-- Magneto-- stays close the obscuring clutch of trees just outside the shack at first, taking care to reconnoiter. It doesn't take long to realize such precautions are hardly necessary. The tin sidings and roof of the abandoned dwelling called to him, and he had taken immediate cover. His senses, however-- now so primed as to recognize the slightest indication of his essential element-- detect little else. Flimsy wire fencing, some drainage constructs, but no automobiles or air traffic, nor complex tessellations of domestic plumbing to indicate significant occupation.

 

Dipping low over Ohio, he'd sensed an area of peculiar magnetic fluctuations and, drawn to it, descended far enough to spy a spiraling earthwork beneath which he could sense an exotic layer of ore. Within the lens of his gifted sense, it appeared as brilliant as any sunrise, though it was not visual in the least. Any mundane comparison fails to capture the essence of his mutation; certainly, after so long, the kinship imbued in the layer of alien metal had been almost intoxicating. There were simply too many people, though, to say nothing of the air base relatively close by. With genuine regret, he'd forced himself away, passing other spots of melodic texture-- mines, the pylons of factories and cubic warehouse formations-- until he at last found himself sufficiently isolated from his many-eyed enemy. 

Between his initial interference with Trask's supply train and the showdown in Washington, he'd had just enough time to locate one of his stash-spots, a remnant of those fugitive months after Cuba. Mystique-- still not fully shed of Raven-- had been far more solicitous in those days, to say nothing of her bright-eyed enlistment as his disciple, and it showed in everything she had so carefully prepared. The law of averages had been against him for, in all likelihood, any of the other five locations he might have chosen would have been long gone. Somewhat miraculously, the stock had never been interfered with, and it was far more plentiful than anything Erik would have assembled alone. Civilian clothes, matches, currency, a first aid-kit, and even a hand-wound radio. He'd used the clothes up obtaining his helmet, but the rest had been worth going back for after Charles' miraculous (and strangely hollow) pardon. 

This patch of nowhere is more strategically sound. He's yet to have the opportunity to test how his new-found finness interacts with radar, so he must avoid busy flight-paths and civilian ground observers. Do they still have the latter? Safer to assume they do, but Lehnsherr knows the breadth of his enforced ignorance is dangerous. He'll need a better understanding of the current political terrain, and Vietnam is only the most obvious human quagmire. It's the volatile borders that most be identified, and those countries which might resist or collaborate with the US in what already seems to be a violent identification process. Where are his mutant brothers and sisters being held, and which countries are the least prepared, now that this new stage of evolution cannot be denied?

 

He'd made for the shack as soon as his boots touched the ground, delaying use of the first aid kit only long enough to light a small fire, using a bit of metal ceiling he peeled away to form a makeshift pit. The hasty bandage he'd slapped on his neck en route had slowed the bleeding, but not much else. Luck-- or the random operations of circumstance-- had been in his favor, though. The gunshot wound was messy, but it missed the carotid and did not lodge or shatter. Though they are impervious to his command, the simple fact is that plastic and ceramic bullets will only help the humans so much. Too light-weight to pack the force of traditional metal, incapable of inflicting the same damage and shredding, and-- though he's sure the military budget is quite healthy-- expensive to boot. 

The antiseptic in the kit was useless, having mostly dissolved to crusty remnants, but the gauze was still useful. With a little more time and attention, he was able to produce a serviceable pressure bandage. The tips of his fingers had felt like ice against his own neck, and were less than cooperative when he went to wind the radio. He couldn't tell if chill was genuine, or if shock and injury-related hypothermia were setting in.

 

Though he'd been glad when he found it, Erik quickly discovered the radio bothered him. Despite his clear comprehension of the words, the transmitted voices sound like gibberish, as meaningless as the background noise of the universe Charles once described. There had been a satisfying tension in the paternal announcer's voice-- something that strived for reassurance while negating that a problem existed at all. Yet those careful statements, bits of calming dross from official press releases, grated on Magneto's nerves, digging tiny, sharp claws along ears too accustomed to silence. To call his demonstration with the Sentinels impactful was a massive understatement; it dominated the news right down to the economic report, and it seemed more than one city had already issued a curfew. The reporter dutifully listed concerns about witch-hunts, unrest among transients, and even elaborate conspiracy theories attempting to explain away what people saw with their own eyes.

By the time the raucous jingle of a commercial segued into popular music, Erik had heard enough. The world out there, speeding along like some gaudy but ultimately hollow suicide bombardier, is so _loud_ , seemingly unstoppable despite the delicate edge Logan proclaimed. He considered all of the mutants he and Charles encountered while recruiting-- the ones, far more numerous, who couldn't or wouldn't commit to their risky enterprise. 

The hydrokinetic in Maine, content to use his gifts as a lobsterman, for example. Or  
the pre-cog who'd worked too hard for her chance to attend Perkins' School For the Blind. She'd met them at the gate, polite yet distant, turning sharply towards Lehnsherr the first time he spoke. In Salt Lake City, there'd been a repairman who could reach through solid objects. He had a wife, two kids, and another on the way-- more interested in Charles' technical jargon and thoughts of education than the looming conflict. He'd seemed relieved that, in the likely event one of his children manifested, they'd have a chance to encounter their own kind. Their last candidate-- a waitress who could transmute sound into balls of plasma energy-- had seemed tempted, but she was waiting out time for her Reno divorce. She'd made the mistake of showing off to her husband, whose solution had been to beat it out of her.

They were-- _are_ \-- out there right now, all of them, grappling once more with their selfhood in the context of their species. Natural organisms, all of them, rather than freaks. Some may even have recognized the participants in the White House drama, broadcast in lurid and jumpy technicolor. Their children, as well as the very young mutants he and Charles encountered, will be of age now. Some will be excited to join the cause, others simply tired-- as Mystique was-- of the endless well-meaning cautions. And still others shall be drawn to Xavier's school, which Erik has no doubt will rise from the ashes.

 

Oddly enough, the conclusion of these thoughts had not been triumph or hope for the future, but a memory of Herr Doktor. Schmidt was always at great pains to demonstrate his skills as a scientist-- aside from Erik, and any prisoner unfortunate enough to draw his fleeting attention, the doctor kept himself well-stocked in actual mice for experiments. Not the kind bred for such things, but field mice-- he made unpopular enlisted men catch them out on the supply roads. Certainly less than ideal, but there _was_ a war on. (He always had a way of saying this as though others around him-- including Erik-- had somehow failed to notice.) Later, Lehnsherr discovered that, while Schmidt _had_ gone to the prestigious university he claimed, the self-styled Doktor had never graduated. Considering the nature of his 'experiments', one could easily imagine a professor or department head taking exception to some of his more pathological behaviors. Even the mice were not safe from the intricacies of torture. He liked to isolate one, exposing it to pungent food or environs, until it smelled quite different from the others.

'Do you see, _kleiner Lehnsherr_?' he'd ask, dropping the unfortunate creature back into the communal cage. The other mice knew it was no longer like them, that it was _other_ , and whole therefore bit their former comrade to death in a sort of enthusiastic orgy, almost tearing it to pieces sometimes. Schmidt said the same thing happened with monkeys-- that it was evolution. While Erik saw, and experienced first hand, far more extreme violations and grotesqueries, for some reason the image of the mice stayed with him. They would seem almost cute, delicate, until they encountered the alien. He remembers the Doktor chuckling, sipping brandy, looking as if all the justification he would ever need was held in that small wire cage.

 

Undoubtably, he and Trask would have gotten along quite well, if Shaw had continued his human masquerade. But mutants were not mice or monkeys, the adult Lehnsherr had thought, ruthlessly silencing the broadcast. The instincts of humanity were the enemy, nothing else. Without realizing it, Erik had backed away from the radio-- a shuffling crab-walk that ended with his body pressed into the corner. Metal, which was good. Element 50, abbreviation 'Tn', magnetic but so weak as to be beneath consideration for practical purposes. He could feel it, though, as he wedged himself in; he just couldn't tell if his body was too large, or too small.

Schmidt always picked on the smallest mice-- he resented imperfect specimens 

_(he'd tell Erik, as he arched back the buckle-end of the belt for a strapping or tapped delicately at the glass casing of a needle)_

though he made do. He was beset by the errors of nature,

_('if you don't want to get beaten then move. the damned. buckle!')_

tormented by them.

_('you are weak! you are weak, and that is why you are here!')_

 

Around Erik, the entire structure thrummed-- a poor encasement, a shade or echo of Cerebro. He'd hated that thing the moment he'd laid eyes on it, his resentment only deepening when he saw how dwarfed Charles was by the equipment. Despite his masculine beauty, there was never anything truly delicate about Xavier-- he had a swimmers body, strong and elegant hands. But when McCoy started nattering enthusiastically about augmentation, hooking Charles up while they traded figures and observations, Erik could have cheerfully torn the entire installation apart.  
And who did the professor really have to be wary of, in the end?

 

How long he-- Magneto! Erik, who is no one's lab rat or prisoner-- had sat in that corner rocking ever so slightly, Erik doesn't know. As soon as he'd come back to himself, he'd rushed for the door, making his way to the cover of trees with only the barest caution. Now, as the weight and chill of the night settle fully over the lonely terrain, Lehnsherr squints up at the stars, forcing himself to recognize old patterns, telling himself that nothing is wrong. He had periods of blankness like that in prison, but that is all behind him now. His memories, sole and exacting companions for such a long period of time, will lose their potency with new input and other foci. The time for the contemplation and haunting of past horrors is over; the future will bring more conflict, and he must be strong enough to meet it.

Tilting his head up, Erik fixes his gaze on another such warrior-- Perseus, with the head of the Gorgon and, to the east, Andromeda in chains. _Camelopardalis_ , the giraffe, who so pleased Erik's father for being utterly out of place in their midst. To the boy Lehnsherr had been, Vater was a book-keeper with an academic bent, though he had been told that-- in the impossible and vague time before Erik's birth-- Jakob had been a professor. Mama had not been 'Mama' at all, but Edie-- the well-educated daughter of a Rabbi, and a budding librarian. Even in Erik's very early childhood, long after their dismissal from University life, his parents had kept a nice little library-- modest, but with a few works comparable to those on Xavier's shelves. Vater knew all the Latin constellations, and Mama pointed out the planets with Hebrew names, like _Chiun_ , _Meleket ha-Shamayim_ , and the bloody _Ma'adim_. 

How strange and far away those recollections were, yet somehow oddly immediate sometimes, in his little cement hole. Such singular things he had begun to hear in the ventilated silence! Not enough to be clear and obvious 'voices', but sounds _underneath_ sounds. The auditory equivalent of the little furry shadows he'd sometimes catch out of the corner of his eye, scuttling despite the fluorescents.  
They never turned off the lights.

 

It comes to Erik then that this is his first opportunity to truly partake of darkness, to recognize it for what it is. There'd been no sleep on the plane, and none during their hasty preparation for the peace conference. He'd dozed briefly in the dingy little Paris room he'd acquired later. After seeing to his own stitches, he'd poured over Trask's film until his eyes flatly refused to focus any more. With only a few swigs of alcohol to dull the pain, his sleep had been fitful-- almost more exhausting than wakefulness. He'd kept jolting into semi-consciousness, buzzing with adrenaline and recalcitrant muscles. The noise of people, of _living_ , had been alien.

Quite suddenly, Lehnsherr finds himself drawing useless breaths of shallow rapidity, as if his throat has become some wheezing and defective mechanism for exhaust. Recognition of this fact doesn't seem to do any good; he cannot slow the spasmodic pace of his lungs, and his chest burns as if there isn't any air at all. So much of this outside world, to which he has so recently returned, is unoccupied. He forces himself to think how easy things would seem if it truly were as unpeopled as it appears right now but, below that, he's wondering. His perception shifts; the entire planet could be just another cavity, like his cell, only larger and sporadically interrupted with debris. Just another cement hole for prisoners, but one he is far less intimate with. Larger, more difficult to control.

A disturbing concept. He has labeled these types of ideas 'sideways thoughts', because it sounds a lot better than 'crazy'. _Verrückt_ , _meshuggah_ , the latter of which Sean once said sounded as though you had mashed potatoes rolling around in your head. There is an element of softness to it, like rotting fruit, but also the impression of consumption in general. The mind turns on itself, begins a process of self-cannibalization. These alterations in perception came without warning, making his relentlessly lit, white room seem like the void of space. So expansive and possessed of unholy gravity that the light of Reason could not escape, drawing everything towards that maw until you disappeared inside yourself. A tesseract of non-existence. 

And if he should vanish like that now? Let the cause of death be couched in such terminology. Something with a technical air; like a paper Charles, with his weakness for quantum physics, might churn out for one of his myriad scientific journals.

 

Erik's body and mind have been behaving quite of their own accord this evening. It is ironic, then, that he is aware of the exact moment in which Charles stakes his claim. The penetrative metaphor is misleading, as is the implied notion of chronology. Once, prompted by an idle comment from Raven, Charles had explained the concept of discrete versus continuous time. The former was the standard unit of measurement, time as humans perceived and had arranged it. Continuous time was more fluid; discernible points became infinitesimal, and never reoccured. In between whatever two points you chose, there could be any number of other points, like miles suddenly adding themselves between once-accurate highway signs.

"So, it's like an hour at lunch versus an hour of math class," Alex had joked, successfully staving off whatever further physics nonsense McCoy might have added. 

Yet later, as Erik and the professor enjoyed their ritual chess game, Charles had elaborated rather oddly. Pensive, staring into the fire for a great deal of their brandy-protracted match, the younger mutant had finally and suddenly said, "There should be a third type of time."

Lehnsherr had responded with a vague interrogative, surprised by the non sequitur as well as concerned. It was rare but, in their short time together, the assassin had noticed a handful of occasions when Xavier would become very distant. Not unfriendly or disdainful, just… less _present_. As if his voice and general aura of being were reaching his body in a lengthy transmission from pressurized depths. Erik disliked this for two reasons. First, it reminded him of sages dreaming in the desert, so close to some other world that burning wheels or many-winged beasts might see fit to close the gap. And, on a more practical-- not to mention selfish-- level, he had simply conceived a very profound dislike for anything that robbed him of Charles' full attention. 

On that particular evening, the metal-bender had employed his usual solution, drawing his lover's focus back to the physical with his own lavish attentions to the slighter form. Such occasions were also ripe opportunities for Lehnsherr's own passionate but sparingly indulged fancies: to have Charles in his lap, kissing for what seemed like hours, or consenting to whatever elaborate bindings and ornaments Erik might conjure.

"Nebulous time," Xavier had murmured, even as the older mutant took the rook from his hand, drawing him up into an embrace. "Inside my mind, time passes quite differently-- for myself and--" Those blue eyes had flickered at last seeming to register Erik's presence. In a tone less shy than actively cautious, he finished, "-- and the rare individual I've had occasion to bring with me."

Erik had worked hard to make that Charles' last coherent statement of the evening and-- in that case, at least-- been rewarded for his efforts. As a strategist, he ought to have paid more attention, though most concepts associated with telepathy were as incomprehensible to him as sunlight to creatures of the sea's deepest reaches. Or-- and this, apparently, is one of the many seminal events he missed-- the airless and desolate surface of the moon. It is equally difficult for Erik to articulate, even to himself, those interactions he _has_ had with the professor's psyche-- though there is usually a sense of powerful phoenix wings, astonishing in their breadth, set all blazing to blue. 

 

The uncharted, ambiguous and directionless kingdom to which Xavier is heir therefore takes Erik both instantly and by degrees. Warmth seeps into him from the faintest reaches of his skin and blooms from his most deeply chilled core-- quiet, delicious. Muscles he didn't know he'd been holding tense relax, and those he had been attempting (without success) to unclench feel as though they have been quiescent all along. Though he is still standing, Lehnsherr has the absurd notion that he is lying on an impossibly soft plain, over which a golden-azure mist has come to rest. The veil is blissfully thick, not the least dispersed by a breeze which whispers some faint notes which may be his name, or the idea of his name.

_('Charles,')_ he murmurs inwardly, thinking he has closed his eyes to savor this. If the invocation were verbal, it would sound like the closest thing to a prayer Erik has spoken in years. 

No response-- at least, not directly. Lehnsherr becomes aware that his eyes are, in fact, open and he is hovering a few feet above the ground, through no deliberate use of his own powers. There a sense of experimental motion, in the same way one flexes the body after waking. Testing, as if the self has been elsewhere and just returned. ' _Or been invaded_ ', Erik clarifies-- a deliberate jab. This is not Xavier's body, though one could hardly tell in light of Xavier's deft handling. The professor does not respond to Lehnsherr's baiting, though surely he must hear it. While not actively angry-- Erik isn't certain that's possible, adrift in this fine sheen of contentment-- the assassin's pride never the less requires at least one or two warning shots. Particularly since, even without the heady sense of peace being bestowed on him, Lehnsherr's primary reaction to his telepathic company is sheer relief at finding shelter from the workings of his own mind. 

 

He'd goaded Charles into this just a short while ago, though not with words. His entire body had coiled the moment Mystique relieved him of his helmet; anticipation, trepidation, and no small amount of desire. In this he is both united and divided, too aware of his feelings to lay the blame entirely with a traitor in his own subconsciousness. Impossible to accuse one 'part' of himself for reaching out with a blind and desperate psyche for the far more powerful one rushing to meet it-- one cannot blame a specific gear when the contribution comes from the entire machine. Through Erik, Charles had lifted the pylon as though it were nothing, had slipped into the neural pathways of his old friend like a key sliding home. Doubtless, the professor can rationalize that previous interaction as necessity; the blazing, soft-steel feeling of that brief possession, which conjured unwilling comparisons of having those scholarly fingers wrapped around a more… intimate part of Magneto's anatomy. 

Oh! And there, for just an instant, comes the slightest sting-- as if from an all too even-tempered wasp. Surely the slightly vulgar analogy has not offended Xavier, unless he's acquired some sort of puritanical streak during their separation?

 

No response. Charles is a disciple of moral propriety, not prudishness, and it always unwise to mistake one for the other. Certainly, Lehnsherr himself-- strategically cautious, aware of but not having internalized the taboos against his own attractions-- had received something of a surprise at the mischievous faun that lurked beneath those rumpled sweater-vests. The lack of communication is atypical, but carries no censure. The metal-bender knows his friend well enough to anticipate the intricate processes of Charles' thoughts, though he has no sense of them. There is simply never a time when Xavier is _not_ thinking, turning some problem of concept (more likely, several) over in careful and penetrating consideration. The professor once praised Erik's mind for its geometry, which he described as precise, ornate, and "decidedly non-Euclidian". Lehnsherr didn't need to completely understand the comment to feel a surge of pride. Perhaps because of this, or his own disposition towards clean lines, the metal-bender has always imagined Charles' thought processes as light through crystal-- honed, seemingly delicate, and devastating in its laser intensity. 

 

He cannot grasp that distant song, though he strains to 'hear' it. The reserve might make Erik feel judged, if not for the contentment the telepath has poured into his very veins. The flow of this steady, profound satisfaction and comfort has a pulse-- a clarion call to draw Lehnsherr closer, and closer still.

The impetus is potent with, almost composed of, a feeling

_(HEIM KOMMEN)_

vaguely associated with words. It is not a message, unless the mysterious seasonal stirring in the hollow bones of birds can be considered a coherent message. A signal-- something that permeates. The days are dying, the dark and cold follow at heel. Go, migrate, prepare. Or, in this case--

_(wroc do mnie)_

Inwardly, Lehnsherr is impressed. _That_ wasn't an idea-- that was Charles' voice, in a flawless appropriation of Erik's rusty and limited Polish. A warning, a demonstration, or both? He's well in the air now, heading northeast with purposeful speed.  
A command, he decides, when it becomes clear nothing else is forthcoming. Charles is clearly fascinated with the metal-bender's newly-honed gift of flight, and his influence never wavers. It is not a hold, precisely, only because the ensorcellment is relatively lax. Clearly, the professor intends for the experience to be pleasant (such a pale term, in this context!). Imbued in everything-- this strange, soporific sense of well-being-- is the potential for that grip to tighten. It's difficult to even think through the intoxicating current, but Erik does find his pulse races when he considers what his old friend _could_ do, should the mood take Charles.  
Or if someone pushes him.

It's clear this new application for Lehnsherr's powers inspires wonder in the telepath; a faint elation of innocent delight, so rare now to the professor that he radiates a little surprise along with that joy. And, of course, in this sharing lies the sorrowful thread of everything unshared.

 

Erik has had plenty of time to ponder lost opportunities-- those paths untaken along the life-lines of one's palms. It's not a tendency inherent in him; instead, it came upon him in his prison like a cancer. A rogue thought, like a cell, replicating its improper code over and over again. How often had he thought of Charles, and in how many kaleidoscopic ways? With longing, for a past so brief it might as well not have existed and future which was just as fleetingly possible; with regret, for those last images and the for pieces in play he had so foolishly ignored or underestimated.

_(If only his grip hadn't been so self-assured, so imprecise; if only McTaggart had possessed enough sense not to fire in the first place. Should he and Mystique have colluded prior, if Charles might have been spared and then-- for his own good-- been brought under Erik's protection…)_

And he had thought of the professor with anger, hating those words of refusal

_(Of dismissal, after everything they'd shared!)_

and the younger man's arrogant naiveté

_('just following orders', that he should even _think_ such a thing, let alone say it!)_

in assuming Lehnsherr could be persuaded from practical survival in favor of some ideal.

What he'd stolen from his lover precluded any expectation of rescue in all but Erik's most desperate moments, but it had not stopped the natural envy of the cage for those with fewer boundaries. He'd imagined Charles enjoying any number of the world's mundane pleasures-- showering, listening to music, drinking, looking up at the sky. In his most self-loathing moments, he imagined Xavier taking a lover. Always female; always blond, with a patient, caregiving nature and a devotion to her handsome scholar that set Erik's teeth on edge. Even the thought of the professor in his laboratory or typing a thesis inspired envy.

 

He doubts now, however, that Charles has been contributing much to academia in recent years. Which is a shame, for even Erik-- leery as ever of even the faintest whiff of clinical deconstruction in science-- can admit that the professor is brilliant. Of course, one can hardly assume that Xavier's pivot, the events from which the downward spiral first showed its slippery decline, date precisely in concert with Erik's. In Paris, harried and working on limited intel about the peace conference, Erik was never the less pulled aside by Hank McCoy. Charles, numbed by his serum and distracted by the future interloper's hedging, remained oblivious. Just around the corner from the others, the human face of Beast had introduced Lehnsherr's back to the nearest concrete wall.

"It was the Draft," the scientist had hissed in Erik's face. "The waste of good, young lives and the fact we were so close to establishing the school when things fell apart." The high cheeks and narrow nose had stayed within the shade of their disguise, but Lehnsherr had seen quite clearly the pale golden irises that gave away the game. "Don't **_ever_** think it was _you_." 

It had been on the tip of Erik's tongue to point out McCoy's own contributions, which were clear despite the shortness of the reunion. Did he hate Hank for enabling Charles, or was he grateful that at least someone had been at the professor's side? Both assumptions-- though they'd reflect upon him poorly-- are in all likelihood still too selfless. What Erik hated was having lost, through every fault of his own, that role of trusted confidant and second.

 

Lehnsherr can sense Charles' attention, licking as a blaze loose in a forest, drawing towards the end of that memory and its associated chain of thought. Is he offended by their possessive bickering, insulted at the implication he must rely on someone, or simply aghast that Erik should still claim abiding affection in spite of crimes new and old? Impossible to tell. Still, still, he is contained; apart from the force that has seized him entirely. In fact (perhaps in reaction?) the layers of pleasure and respite are now as numerous as they are ephemeral. If Xavier turned these sensations up enough, the metal-bender is certain his own consciousness would drown, leaving his body to collide, plunge, or simply starve as Charles sees fit. Yet he's allowing Erik to think; making no secret of his own watchfulness and, maddeningly, still putting forth no comment. It doesn't matter that the professor's actual gaze has no place in this. The older mutant can still feel the weight of that dizzying azure just as he had on the plane.  
Neither one of them had been able to stop staring at each other.

_('Are you so surprised, schatz?')_ the assassin thinks, addressing the foreign psyche directly. _('You were, after all, the thing I most wanted to see. A sore jaw and a few spared jackboots were a small price to pay.')_ The truth and tender words; a deadly combination. Lehnsherr is not a man predisposed to sweet nothings, and the professor is a telepath who places a ridiculous amount of weight on the spoken word. Between the two of them, love words were scarce and magical artifacts, as likely to bite as they were to bless. Erik would never be satisfied with just 'dear' and 'my friend', and Xavier wanted more than just the incoherent mental radiations of a man in the throes of passion.  
Show me, prove it to me; don't look, I won't believe you.

_('Look then, if that's what you want!')_ he thinks, in what he assumes must be the mental equivalent of arms thrown wide. _('Help yourself!')_ Even Erik is aware there's some degree of lunacy in regarding one's love for another as a weapon. _('If you want to think I don't care about you, I promise you won't like what you see.')_

 

"No," says Charles' actual voice, accent curling through Lehnsherr's ear like ghostly velvet. Intoxicating music from a reoccurring but forgotten dream.

Blinking, Erik finds himself at the mansion, standing on one of the great stone porticos. A few more steps will take him through the latticed double doors (the west side of the house?) and into one of Sharon Xavier's ridiculous 'sitting rooms'. It's clear, just from a glance through the open threshold, that the chamber no longer serves such a vague and ridiculous purpose. There's a bed perpendicular to the far wall-- plush, accommodating, as Charles prefers his personal furniture. But it also has metal railings and a clear propping mechanism; a hospital bed whose true nature peeks out from beneath its imperfect disguise. The hearth is alight with a healthy fire, casting inconstant coppery batches of glow against an armchair and side table-- the only items of furniture in the room not decisively pushed to the wall. Lehnsherr's gaze passes quickly over the platoon of pill bottles on the nightstand affecting as much half-conscious blindness as possible. He's not sure what to make of the fact Xavier lets him turn his head away, never mind the single word that's been spoken to him.

A negation, yes, but of what? Lehnsherr's feelings, or the assumption that the telepath would be displeased with them? Surely its not a repudiation of Magneto's presence here, since it's hardly the metal-bender's design. That odd, non-physical pinching sensation occurs again, as Erik watches Charles wheel out of the shadows. Bad enough to see him like that in DC; only the battle itself effectively numbed the quandary of guilt that the evidence of his own crime, and the perverse relief that the professor would not so easily be able to put himself in the line of fire. 

 

"Says the man who dropped a pylon on me," Xavier remarks, in an oddly conversational tone. He's come just to the threshold-- anyone watching would like he was blocking an unwanted guest.

Erik doubts he'll be permitted to speak, but he doesn't test that theory. Instead, he pushes a general idea at Charles, the one benefit of communicating with a telepath.

_(--if you look/see/listen-- nothing i can keep to myself-- no room to hide or consider your offense-- kept you out of the way, didn't hurt you--  
… tell me it didn't hurt you…)_

"Your solicitude is touching." It would be easier if the words were mocking, or even dry. Instead, it sounds as though the professor is lecturing on lateral DNA transfer, the quark composition of protons, or some other near-occult aspect of scientific pidgin. Lehsnherr's own inability to get a read on his lover is becoming disconcerting. It doesn't help that, despite the trials of the past few days and the discordant reminders of his injury, Charles looks beautiful. That same masculine comeliness has always been his, yes, but now it is cut to the glittering facets of a jewel. He looks regal, effortlessly untouchable when once he had to counterbalance intellectual gravitas against faey, boy looks. 

His feet are unshod where they rest, legs clad in fresh black trousers, bare-chested beneath a voluminous dressing gown. It's a finely wrought garment-- too gaudy to be authentic, but too skillfully executed to be fake. The firelight only enriches the fabric, making it the deep red of dried blood shot through with vermillion, highlighting the delicate gold embroidery depicting long-necked birds. Perhaps they're mean to be peacocks or cranes, but Erik immediately associates them with _kohl_ , that bird born of flames in the holy texts. The professor ought to look ridiculous; instead, despite the physical dimness, he blazes like that phoenix, having reclaimed the powerful birthright currently holding his visitor in place. That psychic grip tightens with atavistic warmth, the same way Erik's heart clutches at the sight of Charles.

 

It occurs to Lehnsherr, standing on the cool patio, beneath stars which have galloped forward with the miles and time-zones he crossed in a fugue, that Charles could kill him with a thought-- and probably should. Given a second opportunity, the humans would have made Erik a lab rat rather than a prisoner. Like the most feral of cats, they would have toyed with his agony, making death seem heady relief, since their entertainment would have ended in the same moment as his life. He would have had to wait, as he did with Schmidt, for some ill-conceived experiment to deliver the fatal blow-- a strategy which obviously has not worked out well in the past. 

Th professor is powerful; he would have needed Cerebro to hook his prey, but not to pull the reel. If there was a transition between the telepathy's 'broadcast' strength and the raw force, the older mutant never sensed it. In this same way, Charles can likely snuff Lehnsherr's consciousness from existence. One thought, and not even a dripping bit of wax or smoldering wick to betray all the beliefs and ideas with which Magneto once burned. True death, or a living version-- it is obvious Xavier could also lend the legend of the _golem_ a terrifying truth. Despite the anger, the betrayal between them, Erik firmly believes that-- in either case-- Charles will be quick, thorough, and kind.

"Projecting your own strategic reasoning on me?" Xavier asks, staring at the other mutant with a dismay not completely dissimilar from that he showed on the beach. Surprise, but not enough of it; very little fear for himself, with a heavy dose of wounded offense. The tense lines of his back and shoulders practically bleed words: 'I would never, how can you think such a thing?' Lehnsherr works his jaw and finds he has the power of speech, though he doesn't use it for much. 

"No," he says in a soft whisper, for surely Charles must see. Erik himself is not a good man, and would therefore make an even crueler god. There are many he would fell without qualm, given just his own powers, and there is even less he'd shrink from for the sake of his people. How can Charles, whose fingers have brushed against his own as they pitted black against white, not know he is the most powerful piece on the board? A man may make a Queen Sacrifice, a deal with the metaphorical Devil, but not unless his back is against the wall. No-- if Lensherr had the professor's gifts, such risk would never be a concern. He would merely take with tenderness and reverence, hold onto Charles with adoring, blood-soaked hands and never let go.

"How touching." Faint, airless, the voice in a vault or catacomb. Xavier is looking at Erik so oddly, as a medic might on the battlefield; 'hold on, you're alright', even when the ending has been written. If he could, Erik would curl his lip in frustration. The beard does not completely hide the boyish lines of Xavier's face, which has gone quite pale, so that he looks like a very young man just visited by one of life's more unpleasant and inevitable revelations. But the fugitive himself will not back down, staring at Charles with a gaze that implies the defiant jut of chin even if he cannot perform the action at present. 

 

Lehnsherr has never allowed himself to imagine a final victory; he's never been the sort to visualize desired outcomes in advance at all. That's probably why he's had to go over the experience of killing Shaw again and again, trying to convince himself it happened. It seemed so very unreal at the time. So, although he has a vague idea of mutant society as a place where people like Charles can thrive, he has never placed himself in that context or tried to envision a time when his work is done. What would be the point?  
Success itself would mean Charles could never forgive him, so what would be left? 

"What, indeed?" Said thoughtfully, blue eyes gazing downward, a thousand miles away. Erik is allowed to move for a moment, and he takes several purposeful strides before Charles apparently thinks better of it. When he's still once more, the telepath looks at him sadly. The internal force Erik rallies to contradict his captor feels the strength of legion, but it results in nothing. Not event the twitch of a pinkie. All the same, the metal-bender makes his opposition clear-- he doesn't want sorrowful philosophy, courtesy, or calm arguments. What he's after-- what he's always been after-- is the boiling blood of the Charles he _knows_ exists at the core, smothered by layers of propriety and scientific detachment. By the 'do's and 'don't's of human expectation, and a chivalry others would exploit. The heart that beats, the sinew that quivers-- _that_ is what Erik wants, longing to warm himself over the soft/strong flesh as it parts beneath his own devoted and voracious claws. 

Lehnsherr quickly loses also the brief privilege of articulation, but he doesn't need it. He pushes. Thinks, ( _'If you're going to kill me, Charles, do it now-- and let me look at you. Allow yourself to be the last thing I see. Otherwise, someday, you'll curse yourself for not doing away with me when you had the chance.'_ )

 

The professor sighs, having apparently decided that a firmer hand is needed. Erik watches distantly as his own body stalks forward, crossing the threshold, powers tugging every-so-lightly at the doorknob. The portal closes behind him, glazed panes leaving only the faint impression of a possible world outside, rather than the actual fact. Xavier has wheeled away, back towards the armchair and its attendant table. Despite his role as puppet-master, he still motions the captive forward. Welcoming, and therefore doubly incongruous, given their murky exchange so far. Erik has been wondering why the professor brought him here from the moment he found himself on the patio, but he hasn't-- and he won't-- pose the question coherently. Charles rarely gives direct answers at any rate, particularly in regards to matters of his vaunted morality. 

"I was hoping we could have a civilized discussion," Xavier says, shaking his head at himself. He fixes the metal-bender with a gaze that betrays just a bit of that longed-for heat. "Mark me, we _will_ have words, whether you like it or not. However, since you're clearly not in the right mood for rational discourse, we will attend to other matters first."

 

Lehnsherr's own hands are pulling at his clothing, his uniform, briskly undressing. Any other mind occupying Erik's would have faced roiling hatred, vitriol, and struggle from the start, as meaningless as that would have been. But this is Charles, this is _**Charles**_ \-- taking him, undoing him. Conquered, summoned, and now…

And now leaving his clothing in a pile on the floor. Though once more wrapped in the velvet strength that stole hours from his memory, Erik still manages to be irked by the messy discard of garments. He is instantly opposed to unnecessary disarray-- it offends his fundamental sense of order. The professor quirks an eyebrow again, but grants his 'guest' just enough leeway to fold the cape and uniform, aligning the boots in neat parade rest beneath the arm chair. When he straightens again, he discovers Charles has used his hand to take up the cushion and toss it on the floor. Before he can even conceive of a pithy mental remark, Erik is kneeling on the pillow, facing towards the fire. 

 

The heat from the hearth feels strange; less concentrated than the one he set earlier this evening, but more _present_. For the first time since stepping out of the Pentagon days ago, a final layer of lacquered unreality dissolves. Even in the heat of battle, Erik had been plagued by a sense of his own transparency, as if some innocuous but lurking bit of scenery would suddenly reveal that he himself was nothing but a stage prop. The fumbling grope he'd had with Charles in Paris did nothing to relieve this notion; if anything, it made it worse. 

Ah, dutiful McCoy and the watchful prophet! Neither one of them had been in a hurry to leave Charles alone with his 'old friend', but there had been too much to do (and very little tolerance, on the professor's part, for blatant hovering). It had only been a matter of time before Erik reached for Xavier the way he'd wanted to on the plane, and the action itself had been an outgrowth of their usual argument. The same turbulent variations on a distorted theme. Finally, he'd taken fistfuls of Charles' dress shirt and hauled the other man to him, his entire body a thing of coiled and devoted anticipation as he sealed their mouths together.

Still, doubt had lingered. Was Charles _really_ there? The searing bites so pitifully disguised as kisses, the way the younger mutant seemed almost to climb Erik's lankier form… all of that had been a wild pleasure from which some vital, animating force was absent. Whatever half-desperate, violence-laced consummation they might have achieved had been interrupted, but Erik's inward howl of frustration had been only tangentially related to the loss of physical satisfaction. Some void had been carved out by revitalizing flow of Xavier's serum, and thus created an answering hollow in Erik as well. He'd had a brief put potent vision of the world in grayscale, just like his cell, and had thought in horror: _'I have forgotten how to live in the three-dimensional world. I am only a shadow-thing; less than real.'_

"You _are_ real," Charles' says softly, calling him back to the present. The professor has wheeled just behind Erik, having pushed aside the foot-rests to achieve even a few centimeters of additional closeness, though they still do not touch. Lehnsherr breathes, deep and even-- impossible to tell if the telepath is deliberately syncing their breathing, or if Erik is simply matching it instinctively. His hands lay limp in his nude lap, and the knowledge of Xavier's presence bathes the captive with a warmth far more alluring than that of the fire before him. He'd puzzle over the shift in Charles' tone, but that fine-vapor bliss rolls over him again, slowly dispersing in the bloodstream. Sapphire-lit moon glow, his _liebling_ ; the phantom brush of breeze or current or leaves, but so vital that Erik can only succumb. His thoughts are an incoherent stream of affirmation-- a child's desperate, grasping hands.

( _'Oh, Erik,'_ ) Xavier sends. Because the message is voiceless, Erik cannot identify the tone-- thought, of course, he is not always accurate when words _are_ spoken. 

 

Lehnsherr is distracted by the way the telepath shapes his name as a thought when the first actual touch comes. The former assassin cannot stiffen, balk, or react, and the deliberate natural of the contact is strange, almost frightening. He has encountered incidental physical interaction in the past few days, mostly in mundane contexts. The brief embrace he and Xavier shared was something fraught, much like the victim of thirst who doesn't actually taste the first water he receives, and must be prevented from gorging himself by accident. Even after they'd parted, Paris had been a cacophony, and the telephone booth with Mystique a hothouse tomb. The metal-bender had become so unused to people in general that crowds appeared as pulsing plant-like clusters and the single groundskeeper he'd encountered at the stadium became as outlandish as Trask's damned Sentinels.

"Shhhhh…" Charles soothes, or perhaps it is only the sigh of a man presented with a hopeless tangle of string. The touch is a single finger tip, sliding down the curve of his neck. So slow, it turns a journey of centimeters into almost another fugue as it slips down to the carotid. No pressure, though; the good professor is not feeling for a pulse, and has no need to. He must see/feel/hear how Erik's body throbs with their closeness; how he has transformed what was, only a few minutes ago, a tin-soldier tool in purple and crimson into a palpitating, living thing. The clothes have nothing to do with it. 

Erik Lehnsherr is not a man many have dared attempt to comfort, and fewer still have succeeded. Even Mystique knew, in the days after Cuba, that it was best to let her new leader rage himself out like a storm. Who else would even be moved to attempt sympathy? He had taken up the mantle of leader, and thus forfeited any such consideration. Azazel was a connoisseur of doom, and Janos kept his own counsel. Emma watched it all with the cock of one meticulously sculpted eyebrow and acted as though she were sipping champagne. 

_'I know what this means to you…'_

Charles does not attempt to comfort because-- beautiful, arrogant, impossible man-- he never takes the concept of failure into account. It is something that happens, yes; no one can live life without disappointments. But he must not feel truly daunted by Erik, and all the ways in which Erik has failed to be 'more than anger', because he keeps circling back. 

 

A slight chuckle from behind him, both indulgent and flattered. Sad, too, because whatever phantom projections only Charles is privy to don't seem disposed to leave the room, but there's a sharpness there. Lehnsherr can imagine that little quirk of lips, the tenacious smile seen so often across the black and white board.

Xavier lifts the finger away, replacing it with one warm, well-sculpted hand on each of Erik's shoulders. He is a man who has needed anchoring in the past, and therefore knows how to anchor. It is a bracing, as well-- he leans forward, lips so close to the captive's ear that feathery breath touches even if actual flesh does not.

 

Charles says, quietly, "Perhaps it's best I set aside automatic assumptions about your motivations. I certainly recommend, my love, that you not assume altruism on mine."

 

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [+] The area in Ohio Magneto mentions is Serpent Mound, the site of a large Native American earthwork done over a deposit of iridium from a meteor strike. It's been known to cause magnetic abnormalities that throw off planes, compasses, and even migrating birds.  
> [+] _Ma'adim_ \- Hebrew word for Mars. Lit, 'turning red'.  
> [+] _Chiun_ \- Hebrew word for Saturn.  
> [+] _Meleket ha-Shamayim_ \- one of several names used for Venus in the Torah. (lit, 'the queen of heaven', whose worship was forbidden).  
> [+] _verrückt_ \- German; crazy, insane.  
> [+] _meshuggah_ \- Yiddish; crazy, insane.  
> [+] _kohl_ \- Hebrew word for 'phoenix', though it is a homonym for the more common word 'sand'.  
> [+] _heim kommen_ \- German, 'come home'.  
> [+] _wroc do mnie_ \- Polish, 'return to me'.   
> [+] Charles' comment regarding 'nebulous' time was inspired by the contemplations on reality and experience in Angela Carter's work. She is an absolutely peerless author!
> 
> … I may have gone a little overboard on the notes. ^^; Sorry. We'll just pretend we had _some_ vague redeeming social value intended, rather than just blatant mind-control pr0n. *halo*


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Charles provides Erik with some much-needed looking after, arguing stands in for foreplay, and the boys succumb to inevitable temptation. ^_~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year! Luckily, none of my resolutions involved being a good girl, so I'm back with more Cherik lovin'. <3
> 
> A few quick things: first, I've revised the summary a little bit in hopes of giving a better idea of what the story is about. I also tend to err on the side of caution for trigger warnings, but I do want to clarify a bit. The dub-con in this story is not as serious as that in 'Night Ocean', and it definitely segues from a high-handed way of making a point to consensual dynamic sex. 
> 
> Also, be sure to check out [Thou Shalt Not Eat Stones](http://archiveofourown.org/chapters/12730991) by **valancysnaith** which is, in many ways, this fic's sister story. Both fics came out of our discussions regarding the effects of Erik's imprisonment, Charles' readjustment, and general post-DoPF things we'd like to see for the pairing. So, if you're looking for post-DoPF drama with protective!Erik, BAMF!Raven, and lots of h/c for both our boys, you know where to go. ;-)
> 
> **Warnings/Enticements:** (for this chapter) mind control in relation to physical action, grooming, feeding, service top and bottom, oral sex, D/s overtones, nipple-play, some verbal chastisement during sex, and delayed orgasm.

_"Perhaps it's best I set aside automatic assumptions about your motivations. I certainly recommend, my love, that you not assume altruism on mine."_

 

The whisper lingers tantalizingly on Erik's skin, even as Charles pulls away to absorb himself in practicalities. Nimble fingers examine the bandage on Lehnsherr's neck, and find it wanting. There's a first aid kit on the table, along with a covered mug and porcelain washbasin. Xavier manipulates the other's body to reach out grasp the cup; it is warm and, as the puppeteer removes the lid, sends forth little white wisps that Erik's stomach recognizes even before his mind. _Yoykh_ \-- even the scent of it lays against the tongue, calling forth those vague memories which are, never the less, the brick and mortar of childhood. His mouth waters for only a moment before he finds himself sipping down the broth, the taste and comfort of of it coiling through his innards while Charles disinfects and re-bandages his wounds. 

The telepath seems less despairing about the stitches on Erik's scalp, as well he should be-- it is a skill the older mutant learned well long ago, and the teacher was a harsh task master indeed. Manipulating the needle with the luxury of both hands free made it even easier, but it could never inspire the pendulous haze woven by Xavier's fingers. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to these caresses, and the sensuous motion sends melting bits of starlight scattering up and down Erik's spine. After a time, the professor preforms the odd trick of essentially handing the mug to himself, setting it aside in favor of the washbowl. 

Though he is expecting the next touch and cannot 'jolt' in any physical manner, Lehnsherr is still very much aware of the quavering alarm that somehow seizes in his very self. 

"It's alright," Charles murmurs and, of course, it is. Nothing but a soft flannel, soaked with warm water and the faintest hint of vetiver. This misfiring of responses-- combativeness, panic, sensory overload-- will be a deep source of concern when Erik looks back on the evening. For now, all of that is lost in this strange but profound communion, the way mist may roll through a forest and make of it, instead, an ocean colonnaded by trees. He is aware of his own breathing, so deep and steady, of the iron grating in the hearth and the elaborate wiring of the mansion. Even the components and spokes of Charles' chair provoke only recognition; facts blessedly free of connotation, if only for a moment.

 

So Charles bathes him, with an air that might seem impartial-- perhaps even dispassionate, to an outsider-- if not for the deliberation behind each touch and the deep, languorous indulgence with which the telepath has taken Erik's will. Each brush of fingertips, each press of wide palm to steady or lave, is cut short the moment Lehnsherr registers it enough to begin savoring. He would whimper at each loss, try to chase the tempting tactile succor, but Xavier holds his body still and quiescent. Erik has an image of himself, docile under this cosseting; a creature defined by the careful contact of his _liebling_ , as if Charles is sculpting him from firelight. It is a marvelously detailed image, compelling in its demand for arousal-- and the captive fears it because it belongs entirely to him. 

Such concerns over vulnerability-- and the professor's motivations in general-- are distant things, indeed. His body is utterly focused on its craving for physical embrace; his mind in awash in sensation, clutched up close to that blazing intellect whilst still denied any true intermingling. The telepath keeps Lehnsherr's member passive as well-- despite the roil of arousal in mind and gut. Erik's body stands at that foreign command, legs parted slightly so that Charles might give his cock, balls, and arse the same diffident cleansing. 

 

When the metal-bender is seated again, he is facing his old friend, and even the quiet rapture with which Xavier has entranced him cannot fully dampen the resurgence of guilt. It's ridiculous, the amount of relief he'd felt to counterbalance the ache in his jaw, at the sight of his former lover standing. Too good to be true, obviously, and it was. This G-dless universe gives with one hand only to take with the other, and miracles are nothing more than mythical beasts. If anyone were to deserve such pardon, it would be Charles-- but what has Erik done, to be freed from such guilt?

"Do not pity me, Erik," Charles says quietly. His own hands, having abandoned the tools with which he groomed his guest, curl around wheelchair's armrests. There is savagery beneath his civility, and plenty of it. ( _'I don't need anyone's pity, least of all yours.'_ ) Amazing, how the word and concept can appear viscous, even rotten and repellant when communicated mentally. Cloying; a weighted smell, like dying hospital flowers. 

( _'Guilt is not the same as pity,'_ ) the metal-bender answers instinctively. It his own automatic thought, prior to the formation of any word or viable argument, but it is Xavier's gift and curse to hear it unvarnished. ( _'At any rate, I am not a man of pity… I pay my own debts. This is not the way it was supposed to be; beloved adversary, resented brother, I want--'_ )

 

The professor holds up a hand-- a useless affectation to call for mental silence in accompaniment with the thick, unbroken atmosphere between them. Erik waits, watchful. All the comforting serenity in the world cannot change his essential nature; he is undone by his wanting. Magneto may have the Cause, but Erik as a _person_ owns nothing irreplaceable save the identity Xavier revealed that night in the water-- and Charles himself. 

"You're very careless with your possessions." The cocktail chit-chat tone has returned, but it's not quite enough to dilute the bitterness of the words themselves. The negation that flows through Erik in that moment must be strong indeed, for the telepath actually jerks back in his chair. A fractional quaver, but Lehnsherr is primed to look for any tell.

"You _told_ me to leave!" he explodes while the opportunity is present. "You said--"

"I know very well what I said! _You_ were bent on finishing what Shaw started! The designs of a man you hated, a man we fought together!"

" _Shaw was finished_ ," Erik snarls in an unholy tone that sounds rabid even to his own ears. " **I** finished him, and if you dredged him up from Hell right now I'd do it again!" He manages to bite off the notion that he would do it far more slowly this time, but it hangs between them like a serrated blade all the same. He grinds his teeth, as if looking for a part of the argument to sink them into, find a little stable rage, instead of the explosive kind. "The humans were firing, even though they knew the beach was secure. They started it!"

An actual scoff, "That's spurious logic-- it doesn't mean you had to finish it!"

"I _**didn't**_! Whatever my intentions may have been, they walked away alive-- which was more than any of them deserved." The metal-bender' hands are curled into fists, fingernails bitting into palms. He has no idea why Charles is granting him this liberty now, and even less inclination to pursue that reason. He is entirely absorbed in their struggle which-- though their association is but a fraction of their own life-spans-- seems to be eternal. 

There are times he could shake this blue-eyed boy until his teeth rattle and the facts finally slot into place. For there _is_ a boy within the man before him; lonely, quiet in the face of the world's clamor, obliging and charming because toleration will do if there is no love to be had. Just as there is a very different creature of starvation and ash within Lehnsherr; a stitched non-entity masquerading as a child, who knows the fate of the kind, the peaceful, the gentle-hearted teachers of the world. 

"They walked away alive," Erik repeats, "and their first action afterwards was not to retaliate against you or I, but to carry out an assassination against an official elected as one of their own kind! That is an act of war. You said it on the plane; you admitted I was right. Have you changed your mind so soon?"

"That does not justify your heavy-handed exposure of _our_ people!" They've been trying to speak over one another, have been shouting as pulses pound, in fact. Yet there is a catch at the end of Xavier's last statement, a brilliance in his eyes like the pain of the man felled on the beach-- holding, holding, but never quite spilling over into actual tears. No one, Erik thinks as he watches the professor brace himself in the chair as if preparing for some great blow of feat of exertion, ever gives Charles credit for how strong he truly is. 

 

"We are stronger together. They'll pick us off one-by-one-- that's what they've been doing these past ten years…" Frowning, Lehnsherr lets his own voice fade. His dear opponent has fallen completely silent, still and abstracted like a mage whose scrying bowl has revealed something unpleasant and incomprehensible. The telepath looks away from Erik, and then farther-- focusing on a middle distance that excludes any other presence in the room. Erik's heart lurches at the sight, at the absorption in phantoms which paint that face into a grotesquely elegant marble mask.

What did that hairy brute _tell_ Charles? Logan's story was very static by the time the metal-bender heard it, just rote facts and a set reticence in that beastly jaw that Lehnsherr-- whether he actually liked the man or not-- recognized all to well. There are certain acts, scenes witnessed, which are too heinous to bare any true recitation. No details, no narration of your own feelings could be tolerated, for it was effort enough convey such things in as few words as possible. The escapee had not been particularly interested in the prophet; he was absorbed in his own dead, and had no need to borrow. There were goals to be focused upon-- threads to cut, poisoned vines to be sheered before they could bloom. 

" _Schatz_ ," Erik whispers urgently, not sure if he is frozen by the telepath's will or his own fear. The endearment is both natural and strategic-- if unaccepted, it may at least rouse Charles back to anger. 

He is dreadfully certain his own eyes have taken on that blind but all-too-insightful cast too many times. The walls of his prison had been gray and unchanging, but they were also dangerous and inconstant. Things moved and wavered beneath the grain of the concrete, a stealthy slithering you would glimpse from the corner of your eye. There were little furry shadows with nothing to cast them, constantly absorbed in incomprehensible wars with one another beneath fluorescents that did not have the right angles to cast them in the first place. You _knew_ none of them were real, but you still wanted to sleep with your hands over your face. Not just for the scant and borrowed darkness, but in case they decided to crawl inside your mouth or nose. The memory of these unreal companions makes the once comforting firelight sinister, driving Lehnsherr's breathing to that of a panicked horse.

He may or may not give a groan of despair, but Charles' eyes at last return to meet his own-- a tired blue that must match the ocean in the last days of the earth. 

Less than a whisper; "I'm so tired, Erik…"

 

The older mutant moves quickly, and of his own accord. His conscious mind has no plan, but instinct guides him, leaves him kneeling between Xavier's legs with his head in the telepath's lap. Hands dive beneath the decadent robe, encircling the strong svelte waist and crossing behind to rest between the professor's body and the chair. He lays with his cheek pressed against one trouser-clad thigh, eyes closed-- careful, _careful_ \-- but holding on. 

In an act that would relieve the strain even on Samson's shoulders, Charles leans forward, embracing Erik in return. He draws the great front lapel of the robe across the nude man's back, hunching over a little, free hand brushing shorn hair before completing his part of the circle. Better still, he takes Erik to him with that velvet-sheathed will; closer, sharing some of his own grasping relief, his want in the face of all that lies between them. Lehnsherr smiles ever-so-briefly; moans, swathed in that pressence like an unwary child caught up by _die Erlkonig_. 

Once more, Erik's hands obey another master, skimming against skin as they move to cup Xavier's shoulder blades. Where the professor can better feel the embrace, Erik realizes. He would experience once more the insidious wend of guilt, if not for the overwhelming sensory input; the texture of his lover's smooth flesh, coupled by the way his own strong-fingered caress is experienced by the telepath. Warmth of the body, which banishes a different kind of chill. The scent of cedar and something undefinable that belongs to Charles alone. The smooth handling of his will by that of his dear one makes Erik ache, with the same obscenely sensual longing fired clay must remember of the sculptor's hand. 

( _'Harder,'_ ) he pleads inwardly, uncertain if he means the psychic entrapment or the physical hold. 

He feels unreal, experiencing this. Charles must know, must see how often Erik has imagined him throughout the long years, pined for their companionship both erotic and mundane. On bad days, he would sit perfectly still in a corner of his cell, conjuring the professor beside him in minute detail. The weight of him, curled beside Lehnsherr as it had been in so many hotel rooms, reading while Erik did the morning's cross-word puzzle, or playing a drowsy game of chess that depended less on strategy and more on the excuse for physicality. 

Eyes closed against the glare of his cage, Erik would contemplate the press of hip flush with hip, the determined set and enticing curve of shoulders beneath his encircling arm, the scent and feel of Charles' hair. And sometimes, instead, the warm hollow of the Englishman's shoulder, where the prisoner might rest his own cheek and feel the thrummings of that accent like the delicious vibrations of a viola's strings. Even within the safety of his own mind, Erik could not abide those damning words of comfort-- that everything, _anything_ , would be alright. Instead, he strived merely for the brief ability to fool himself, focused on phantom sensation and the distant murmur of Xavier rhapsodizing: mitochondrial DNA, the folding of space-time, the evolutionary significance of bizarre creatures occasionally found in distant ecological niches. 

 

Presently, Charles' grip does tighten, accompanied by a noise so low and needful that Erik cannot discern if it is sorrow or commiseration. Is it a response to Lehnsherr's request, his memories, or the professor's own still mostly shielded emotions? 

"Erik, Erik," the telepath murmurs, now bent in their odd embrace to the point his lips move against the nape of Lehnsherr's neck. Perversely, the older mutant is gratified by this indirect answer-- a yearning that echoes, note for note, his own. 

He shuffles forward on his knees, though there is scarcely any distance to be closed between them. Nose brushing against Xavier's member, Erik gives into the urge to nuzzle at it. The outline against his cheek and questing lips is impressive, despite the fabric and quiescence of the organ. The professor's nails dig briefly into Lehnsherr's shoulders, accompanied by a silent growl that is still perfectly thunderous within their shared mental landscape. 

( _'I'm afraid its not much inspired by anything other than manual intervention, these days-- and sometimes, not even then.'_ ) How well Erik knows that particular brand of academic hauteur, and the tender flesh it masks. ( _'Psychogenic arousal is impossible.'_ )

 

The metal-bender's only response is to redouble his affectionate attention, reaching for-- feeling Charles _allow_ him to reach for-- his own gifts to undo the fly and allow for closer inspection. If Xavier's comment was meant to discourage him, then it has missed its mark. Erik has not forgotten the reason for his current position, nor how quickly the professor came to hardness in Paris, a strangely ephemeral creature even as he rode his lover's thigh. This intimacy is as everything else, now; a treasure with a specific price no matter which choice is made. Moreover, whatever the telepath's conscious intentions for the evening, he is bare beneath his trousers-- a boon Lehnsherr would never waste. Almost reverently, he takes the professor into his mouth, laying his tongue flush against his lover's member, not even aware of the fact his own eyes are slipping closed.

 

The submissive nature of the position does occur to the assassin-- perhaps more now because he is deliberately participating in it-- but he dismisses it as irrelevant almost instantly. He has spent a decade scrupulously aware of every little movement and gesture made within his monitored cage, determined to give nothing that could-- even with the most creative imagination-- be construed as a symptom of imprisonment's long attrition. His struggles and flairs of madness have been entirely internal, and all the more difficult to endure for his soul's naturally treacherous terrain. 

But this is Charles, who transforms words, acts, and even meaning with his presence alone-- Erik's pretty sorcerer, who so often has no need of that god-like mind to work his will. So in a way, it's not _enough_ obeisance, though he applies himself with gusto all the same. The little tricks he knows are old, but relived so many times that they are quite readily at hand.

( _'Make me,'_ ) Lehnsherr thinks with deliberate-- and probably excessive-- volume. ( _'The way you like it, whatever feels good for you now. Forget the guesswork.'_ ) His own cock is heavy, a burning pillar of steel between his legs. ( _'Make me please you.'_ ) The very notion is like a flame through straw. Erik _wants_, directionlessly; more of Charles' touch, his presence, the mental companionship that reaffirms Erik's own existence. His _neshama_ , channeling the scattering of self and power the same way electricity is grounded. He could rub himself all over Xavier, as absurd as that sounds, in the sinuous way felines achieve a full-body caress. 

Charles doesn't take the bait; he doesn't slide into his lover's consciousness like water adhering to the shape of a riverbed, even as it wears away those same constraints. The words that ripple through Erik's mind, however, are rich enough compensation. 

That beautiful accent, somehow clipped and breathless despite the purely telepathic medium; ( _'Perhaps you should focus on the task at hand? Your efforts have had little impact, so far.'_ )

 

Helplessly, the older mutant moans, sound muffled by his burden and the sheer venerating excitement that rushes through him. This seems to have more effect than his previous attempts, so he repeats the vibration, giving into the urge to simply suckle. While imprisoned, his water had always been rationed-- a single delivery he chose to mark his 'morning'-- and even Lehnsherr lacked the skill to portion it out satisfyingly during the day. A puzzle with no solution, for the very knowledge of its scarcity made one crave it all the more. To stretch his slim supply, he had picked a button loose from the prison cover-alls, knowing from long experience that sucking on it would help. Not much, but one could appreciate even the smallest aid against dehydration. This is so much better; Charles, at last throbbing to life under his attentions. The professor is stroking his hair, over and over again, with tender solicitude that belies the critical words of before. The contrast only spurs Erik on. As his jaw begins to ache, elegant scribe's fingers steal down to caress the articulation of neck and jaw, and the secret, sensitive niches behind Lehnsherr's ears. He melts a little, but will not let go of his determined rhythm, focused on feeling his lover's intimate heat and the traces of iron pounding through the primary vein.

Indeed, he can feel the precious element rushing through Charles' bloodstream; a galaxy of golden circulation whose nexus is the drumming organ invested with so much sentiment. Charles; Charles' heart, his pulse, even the weight of the professor and the glide of his skin against the metal components of the chair. Lehnsherr's focus has both narrowed and expanded. All of this is a world, a part of his _schatz_ , that no one else will ever see. It belongs to Erik and Erik alone-- his, _his_ …

A star-shower of tiny but potent flares of pleasure serves to blot out this train of thought. He is dimly aware of rustling satin, the fact the professor is no longer cupping his supplicant's bowed head with both hands. The movement is ever so slight, but in a definite rhythm that compliments what Lehnsherr previously set. Then he realizes it; Charles is toying with his own nipples, the new locus to which his physical sensitivity has migrated.

Erik gasps-- almost chokes. Desire makes him dizzy as he easily pictures those buds, which have always inspired in the metal-bender a faintly embarrassed fascination. They are so lovely, set amidst a wholly masculine terrain; oddly delicate blushes of coral on a rower's muscular, sparsely-haired chest. He used to nuzzle at the professor's collar bone, kiss and bite along the hint of healthy curve in the belly, ignoring those nipples simply because they entranced him. Too pink, too apt to inspire exotic half-hunger, and too sure to provide a dreamy, torpid satisfaction those few times he bowed to their temptation. What must they look like now-- how red must they become when Xavier indulges himself, now that they are so key? He wants to lift a hand, awkward though that may be, and work in concert with his lover. Once he inspires a traditional orgasm, he can salute those treasures with his lips.

 

Again, Lehnsherr is denied, but left with great reward all the same. Charles won't let him move-- _won't let him move_ \-- and the sensation of that restraint is almost beatific.  
_( **Mine**.)_ Neither one of them recognizes the thought as solely their own, and neither one of them cares. At last, the professor comes in Erik's eager mouth, and the metal-bender comes all over those crisp dark trousers. Charles doesn't force the latter occurrence-- his graciousness lies in allowing his lover's excitement to peak on its own. All the while the older mutant feels just that slightest scrape of will, indicating that the telepath _could_ deny him if so inclined.  
That thought finishes him off. 

 

The sense of Xavier, of that vibrant psyche, twines itself about the metal-bender, the way rain may freeze around a branch or bud to form a perfect sheath. It's warm, of course, because everything about Charles-- even when roused to anger-- is warm. Erik, made a marionette not by strings but rather by this seductive armor, still cannot smother his own internal blaze of triumph. 

For this brief eternity, he is exactly where he wants to be.

 

 

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [+] _Yoykh_ \- Yiddish. Chicken soup.  
> [+] _neshama_ \- Hebrew. 'My soul', an affectionate term.  
> [+] _psychogenic arousal_ \- sexual excitement caused by thoughts, rather than outside stimuli.
> 
> ...yay, short notes this time! ^_^
> 
> Thank you so much for taking the time to read my story! If I could trouble you just a moment longer to comment or kudos, I'd be very appreciative. I'll give you tiny chocolate sharkies! ^_~


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to take the time to thank **liquorish2003** , **ECR** , and everyone else who has taken the time to comment on this fic. (Not to mention, of course, the amazing **valancysnaith**.) I can't tell you how much I appreciate the response and encouragement. Any thoughts or kink suggestions are most welcome!
> 
> I'm also very grateful you've taken the time to look at my story. If I could bother you just a bit more to comment or leave kudos, I'd be a happy little clam indeed. ^_~
> 
> No major warnings for this chapter-- just heavy petting, more arguing (the boys are good at it, we must give them that ^^), and some PTSD-related anxiety from both Charles and Erik. Which is obviously solved by denial and making out. *sheepish*

Even within the heat-shimmer depths of his own release, Erik shudders with a second wave of almost intolerable delight. The pulsing under-rhythm of mental pleasure which, like scent, is the powerful author of memory. Throughout their long separation, he had never quite been able to properly recall just how Charles felt, particularly in the psychic sense-- though he'd had hours enough to invest in trying. Now-- like any particular aroma, taste, or clear high note-- he feels a recognition so deep and instant that he is loathe to leave the moment, and all the others it recalls. 

Here is Charles, flushed in the jewel-shadows thrown by one of the ridiculous mansion windows, laughing too loudly even as he scolds Lehnsherr to be quiet, that the children may still be up and about. Settling against Erik in the back of some rented vehicle while the toccata of rain makes the roads impassible and the metal-bender's groans are muffled against the leather seat. Charles, naked in the dawn light of some desert hotel room, the radio playing 'Heatwave' while he says, 'Well then?' with a raised eyebrow and endowments shown to best advantage. 

A thousand little things-- old things, yes, but carefully preserved and given new vibrancy by their sharing. By Charles' matching memories of Erik in each place and time. The cohesion of their perspectives is natural, unintentional, and very telling. Which, indeed, is the greater liability? To have felt so strongly then, or to hold on so tightly now? Still, Lehnsherr digs mental heels in only when the professor does, seasoning pleasure with shame and the volatility of one caught not naked, but wounded. They fight nostalgia for those by-gone days like they fight each other; fiercely and with just as little ultimate success. There's a bitter taste on both their tongues, but Erik drinks it down with pointed gusto.

 

Finally, the older mutant releases Charles' cock with a gasp, pulling back only far enough to once more lay his head on the professor's thigh. Miserly, he licks his lips, thumbs moving in circular caresses where they rest against the telepath's sides. A little higher than of old, in deference to the alerted landscape. Non-existent heavenly powers, the way he _smells_ inspires mental vigor even if Lehnsherr isn't quite ready to respond again physically. He's impatient with himself, and that too is among the riot of images-- how he nearly fell upon Charles that first time, famished, needy, almost a novice and wanting to do everything at once. The professor had laughed, they'd wrestled playfully as the more experienced party tried to take the lead and Erik, never shy about diving in headlong, became so engrossed in his survey that actual coupling became (somewhat) less of a priority. A weakness, an indulgence, but he'd never felt so _enflamed_ before, as though his lover must be both gathered up and drowned in. He wants--

 

"Erik, you're bleeding."

Those same hands that cosseted him now push Lehnsherr away. For all the brief but perfect intertwining they experienced earlier, the metal-bender still doesn't have a precise read on Xavier's thoughts. He hardly needs particulars though, not when he can feel the nauseous rallying of shame, fear, and self-doubt. Charles' arrogance has always stemmed from his bizarre mixture of scientific certitude and moral discernment, and there's not much of either to be had at the moment. Everything is bleeding out from that beloved form; the self-assurance, the angry justification, the lust that ached for fulfillment-- everything that wrought the lure which so effectively reeled Erik 

_(home, home, you know this is home)_

to the mansion tonight. In its place is a hollowness the former prisoner knows, though its texture is quite different from his own experience. It howls, portentous, like a wind through endless caverns, sapping one's strength even before the long march has begun. Erik realizes, belatedly, that his own mind may have been just as much a respite for the professor as Xavier's was to him, difficult though that may be to believe. Whatever haven they've conjured between them is dissipating and, though his soul already prickles with the coming chill, he clings determinedly to the warmth of Charles' lap. 

"Let me see," the professor insists. The tone of his voice is flat and shaken, a clear sign that he is already distancing himself from the intimacy only moments ago. He's pulled away to the edges of Erik's mute and groping psyche. The few lingering tendrils are so faint as to be almost agonizing and, when he forces the older mutant out of his lap, it is entirely a matter of physical motion and leverage. The thorough check for wounds that follows is equally ungainly-- avoiding frantic, but falling far short of the evening's earlier poise. 

Somewhat miraculously, neither the stitches on Lehnsherr's scalp nor his his bandaged neck have recommenced bleeding. The actual source is a long scratch on Erik's shoulder; perhaps a bit deeper than such usually inflicted by fingernails, but of no ultimate consequence. As soon as that's been determined, he tries to lean forward once more, but his only consolation lies in the fact that he growls when denied, rather than whimpering.

"Hold still," Charles says, putting no true impetus behind it. He's trying to bend closer, perhaps to compensate for the diminishing firelight, but Erik will not have it. Capturing that wide artisan's palm, he finds the smear of red and the darkened responsible nail, devoting himself to licking and sucking both free of blood. "You seem rather fixated on dirtying my hands." Reproachful-- perhaps a bit self-mocking-- but Xavier still refrains from imposing any real consequences. Lehnsherr doesn't deny the sarcastic metaphor; it isn't far from the truth. By the same token, however, there is also a great deal Erik would do to shield his lover, to carry banner and sword into battle in Charles' name. That thought is definitely overheard, for the telepath hisses as though burned. No matter-- he would rather have Charles angry than embroiled in a contemplation of his own powers and the moral implications of said. 

 

Silence wends itself between their heartbeats, which are no longer anything even approaching a tandem set. The lurking flames of the professor's mental presence are dwindling more quickly than the fire, and he's hastily trying to tidy the dressing gown with his free hand. This close, Lehnsherr can see each gold and pearlescent stitch of the flowing embroidered birds, graceful against the rich vermillion fabric. He thinks of yanking at it, tearing away the fretwork creatures until its just his _kohl_ , his creature of fire and starlight in his arms. Surely Charles would stop him, really **stop** him, if he tried to scoop the telepath up as he once had, knowing any physical struggle would now be even more vastly unequal.

 

"Bastard!" Xavier seethes-- a flare, a fire-wheel, a flash grenade in metal-bender's mind. "You _bastard_!"

Magneto lets out a small grunt of surprise upon suddenly finding himself a few feet away, now kneeling on the hardwood floor. There's that pinch again, even as the anger in Charles' physical expression begins to fade. Good G-d, is _that_ what the telepath objects to-- the name Erik has taken for himself?

"That's not a name," the professor says with profound assurance. "That's not  you." 

"Isn't it?" the fugitive asks, raising an eyebrow. He wonders at Xavier's reluctance to acknowledge the appellation, since the professor certainly isn't shy about laying Magneto's crimes at Erik's feet. So it's not a matter of denial. No, more likely its some aesthetic or philosophical concern. Something that offends Charles' sense of intellectual architecture and rigor. 

 

Lehnsherr rather thinks he _does_ have concrete and classical reasons behind taking the theatrical name. It's childish to some degree; it was certainly intended that way when Mystique first sarcastically tossed out the notion. Yet so are the _dybbuk_ and _kobold_ which served-- among so many others-- to embody primitive man's fear of the unknown. Up close the trappings and gaudy dye of any opera villain look merely tawdry but, from the rafters, they serve to vividly outline those fears the audience has already brought with them. 

They'd actually had a rather lengthy discussion about it once-- himself, Mystique, and Janos. Granted, the discourse had been augmented by a long Scandinavian night and potent, rather pricy spirits-- all courtesy of Shaw's taste for lavish safe-houses. The entire nascent Brotherhood had helped themselves quite heartily, for the monster-doktor himself would have no further use for such things. The atmosphere had become somewhat celebratory, as if they were tricksters kicking at the dirt of Klaus Schmidt's grave. It was the first and perhaps only time real camaraderie crept into what was essentially a practical alliance. Azazel had chimed in as well, musing over the naming of things and the power this endowed, tail twitching as if to underscore the source of his own title. In an odd reversal of public behavior, he'd seemed rather inclined to let Janos speak for them both, and the solemn wind-caster had already discovered a penchant for poking fun at the girl who'd once been called 'Raven'. So playfully arrogant and vivacious Magneto's second had been, claiming credit for his title and, subtly needling, expounding on her own appropriation of the 'feminine mystique'.

 

Predictably, Erik is presently treated to a narrowing of Xavier's blue eyes, and a slight drain of color beneath newly trimmed beard. The memory is doubtless something Charles would have welcomed on the plane-- a more appropriate answer to 'how was she?' than the metal-bender's neat party line and implication of the carnal. Now, of course, its an unbidden reminder of the sister adopted without question, the girl Magneto coaxed away with such apparent ease. For the briefest of moments, he catches a flash of how her brother saw her; laughing, smiling, full of expansive gestures and the desire to be what she had always been, underneath. Erik isn't sure exactly what passed between the 'siblings' on the White House lawn, but he quite clearly remembers the delicate traceries of hope in those golden eyes-- both then, and when they'd interrupted Mystique's capture in Paris. How quick and eager she'd been, to confirm that Charles had come for her!

_('And then you shot her,')_ the telepath sends, as if he isn't applying his powers, tracing the chain of reasoning Erik himself had followed in that moment, always picking and choosing. If Lehnsherr sometimes thinks of Charles as a hypocrite, it stems from frustration rather than real disrespect. Erik knows himself to be one; all that unwilling but utterly natural affection juxtaposed with his pontifications about 'the Cause'. For a few short moments, it would have been safer for all of them 

_(safer for Charles)_

if Mystique were dead. Simple mathematics had taken over, and Magneto remains disturbed as to how his own duplicity would play out if _Xavier_ is ever on the other side of the equation. He can only hope-- in the ill-practiced way of one unfamiliar with the emotion-- that he never has to find out. 

When the younger man begins shaking his head, Lehnsherr thinks at first that it must be a response to what he's seen-- that he's about to be lectured about his penchant for queen sacrifices. But no, it is too slow, too weighted for that alone. Somewhere, one of Sharon Xavier's seemingly endless, figurine-dotted clocks chimes. Too loud to miss, too far away to count.

 

"I don't know what to do with you," Charles says, in a rough and oddly wavering tone. Erik's own hands tighten into fists, uncomfortable with the chill that stirs in his own bones. The words themselves might be prosaic, and even Lehnsherr has heard similar sentiments from mothers of small children. But it is usually phrased as a question-- 'what am I going to do with you?' Rhetorical, of course, but it doesn't sound final the way the professor's admission does-- precluding possibility. At the same time, older mutant feels a typically contrary sense of satisfaction. Charles keeps him, holds onto him, though Erik has no specific purpose and is-- as so many would attest-- far more trouble than he's worth. Everyone else has always known exactly what to do with _kleiner_ Erik Lehnsherr, and it has almost always been incredibly unpleasant. From another man the thought might be tinged with resentment but, to the self-styled assassin, it is merely an observation. A matter of biological fact, and therefore survival.  
Schmidt was always very firm about eliminating that which had no value.

"You said we had no place for pity," Magneto reminds Charles, easily reading the younger man's expression. 

_(then let there be no pity between us, dearest adversary. no pity, and no mercy, for we hold one another hostage, my own, my excruciating thorn)_

Eyes rolling closed, he savors the intermingling. Let Charles refuse to make up his mind-- 'yes, I'll touch you; no, I won't'; the odds favor Erik more when Xavier is indecisive, and vulnerable to temptation. He's familiar enough with this particular telepath to know this sub-verbal sharing stems from strong emotion, and will therefore be quickly mastered. A side-effect, no doubt, of their earlier coupling-- which is gratifying in and of itself. To still be wanted, despite the years and scars and wounds still raw; to still fit against one another naturally, though time has warped and devastated so. Something like lifeblood, this closed circuit between them; the balm of being seen and known which is only tangentially related to the general anonymity of mutantkind. It is thick and inescapable, sweet with both necessity and reward. To Charles, Erik has profound meaning, though many-- including the object of such affection himself-- find it mystifying. The professor's path would be so much easier without Magneto's contrary, seemingly incompatible stance.

 

"The same could be said for you," the telepath murmurs, looking far more composed than his mental projections would suggest. The poise is rote, as innate as Erik's instinct for high alert and fluid strategy. "And so we've traveled circuitous leagues to find ourselves standing exactly where we began."

The older mutant can't dignify that with a response, verbal or otherwise. He considers the interruption in their discourse quite pleasant, and is in no hurry to return to old arguments just at the moment. What he wants is the opulent eroticism of their connection, the blessed places where their curving trajectories intersect. For both of them, love is defined by sacrifice and protection, though the results appear as incompatible as the very polarities which repel and define magnetism. A sardonic, weary smile flickers on Xavier's mouth-- he may have overheard that comparison-- but is is gone as soon as his gaze shifts from Erik into the room's abundant clusters of shadows. 

 

These pockets of darkness are tinted deep carmine and wound-brown, seemingly peopled with phantoms too fresh to allow Charles much peace. Lehnsherr finds he dislikes them just as much, though probably for different reasons. His cell had been full of inappropriate figments, shades cast by nothing which were nevertheless very clearly defined. Here the unlighted corners bleed into one another, too numerous to be monitored properly. Each shape cast has a solid, clear progenitor (books, a few photographs, microscopes, more books). Dear, lovely Charles must have well-behaved shadows, which politely obey the laws of physics. All the same, Erik knows they are not trustworthy-- too large, too much like open portals. Who knows what they might disgorge?

The gazes of both men are watchful and it seems now, even more than in DC, that the atmosphere is potent with choice. Signs and portents, just as those scrawled on the crumbling papyrus of the exiled; vague doom sketched by a clawed vagabond. What weighs on the professor is more than dread communicated by mere words and-- not for the first time-- Erik wonders what exactly happened between the numbed mobility of Paris and painfully flexed strength in Washington. It takes no special gift to divine the question in his own, pale green eyes. A question raised at Delphi, at the feet of the Sphinx, as Moses found his precarious way down mount Sinai: 'What did you _see_?'

 

It's Charles' turn to shake his head and answer with silence. For the first time, it occurs to Erik that the evening's events betray desperation on the part of the telepath. A decade may have passed, but it's clear Charles' is still his own harshest taskmaster. Yes, he took control of Magneto in the ruined stadium, but that had been driven by necessity. The touch had been gentle, reluctant, and all too brief. Something else has prompted Xavier to reach out for his old friend and former lover, despite the ambiguous nature of their parting; something made the professor give into a temptation he'd once barely been able to acknowledge to himself. The thought fires terror and melting elation in Erik-- a burning comet of ice. He fears the teeth of needle and scalpel, but not the beloved hands that might wield them.

"What do you think you're doing, Charles?" Lehnsherr asks, quietly enough to avoid any accusatory inflections. He poses the question this way only because saying 'tell me what's wrong' is impossible. Neither one of them would ever volunteer such information, never mind not knowing where the list would start. 

A glare, but too morose to have much strength behind it. "I should never have brought you here. You never would have come back on your own." Still addressing Erik, but looking past him, as if at some reflection, "I don't know what I expected to accomplish."

Ah, but what's done is done. Dye cast; die cast. Now, Lehnsherr has this little gem over which he may gloat, when the night's silence is deafening and he is not welcome at the professor's door.

"Must it always be about leverage for you-- tactical, emotional, or otherwise?" Xavier asks, in a way that clearly indicates he doesn't expect an actual answer. Erik doesn't feel the tell-tale, moon-warm brush of silver by which he experiences the telepath's touch, but he's never been entirely certain the professor cannot read people undetectably. Whether the paranoia is justifiable or not, its more likely he's simply read Erik's expression which, even in Paris, seemed plain enough to him when others find it utterly inscrutable. "You're always welcome here," Charles continues. "You can always come home."

 

Which, to Erik's great regret, also means 'give up'. Such a fine one, his _neshama_ , to cast stones about emotional manipulation! The price, though Xavier's damnable optimism may shield him from it, is painfully clear to the son of Jakob and Edie Lehnsherr. Most certainly, he can have a few happy years with Charles, perhaps even a decade or two-- and then watch everyone he cares for be destroyed. 'Death' and 'killing' are not the right terms for what they will inevitably suffer. Such words imply some opportunity for memorial, for tangental equality or value, which is utterly absent in the eradication he's known before. 

"I won't let them erase you, Charles," he says, not bothering to hide the sheer ferocity in his tone. "I won't watch them make you into something denied the dignity of a name or a grave, or spend the rest of my life wondering what happened to you-- each imagining more awful, more impossible to bear, _and so many of them_." He keeps his mind very carefully clear of memories-- especially those of his mother's haunted eyes-- but cannot entirely banish the visceral sound of laughter, or how someone else's spit had dribbled down his face. 

"And one automatically follows the other?"

"Open your eyes, Charles!" Lehnsherr grits out in frustration. "You admitted I was right on the plane-- have you changed your mind so soon? They already _have_ come after us, subjected people we care about to fates even criminals are found too good for!" He must make an interesting sight indeed; a man kneeling, naked and passionately argumentative, on the floor. All the same, he has an animal instinct for the space around Charles, the quality of the atmosphere and aura that enshrouds his lover. What ground he could take now-- get closer, clasp those warm hands, take an angry kiss if such is the only further prize to be obtained tonight-- is marginal compared to the possibilities if he waits. That he has the option of motion at all is telling in and of itself. Their arguments have a rhythm just as their love-making, though far less enjoyable. So he presses harder, "The humans will not leave you be-- and I'll be damned if I let you fall on your peace-loving sword, much less lead the rest of us to do the same!"

That dear, brilliant fool has the nerve to look hurt at this, and Lehnsherr almost expects a burst of power or enforced silence in return. When neither occurs, he knows Charles has truly forgone listening, and suspects his beloved has become tangled in a very inconvenient side-effect of his vaunted morality: guilt. Erik persists, because persisting is what he _does_. "You can be wrong, Charles. Logan came from a world where you _were_."

The professor pales further, sparking what passes for regret in Erik's heart. Xavier hasn't looked well at all this evening, though it has the odd affect of giving him a consumptive's death-bed vibrancy. "Trask--"

"There are a dozen more just like him, and worse, Charles. I can promise you that."

"You don't know that, Erik." And there's that noble venom, eyes glittering like blue sky above a doomed beach. "You can't convict an entire race based on something they haven't done yet."

 

"How is it that you-- the telepath who can see into the hearts and minds of men-- are so bloody naive?" A furious snarl obscures the actual despair in the question, blurring it away in the grating of a predator's teeth and throat. If the sound is devoid of humanity, it is because Erik is not human-- Schmidt taught him that long before he could conceive of his power as anything other than an affront to the Order of G-d. The frustration of a monster, a biological freak. Unbowed, Xavier faces his friend with the same calm determination that once defined a hundred chess matches. That, and an empathy interwoven with the steel, as when he had prophesied that killing Shaw would not bring Lehnsherr peace. The inquiry may be directed at the professor, but the rage itself is not.

_(friend/ first brother… in the ocean, you named me, called us the same when I had only been 'other'… foe/ treasure/ heart and blade beneath my armor…)_

The man straining to bear up beneath the mantle of 'Magneto' is tried, and knows the road he  
_(has chosen)_  
must travel will eventually banish even the memory of rest. But Erik's anger is like that of the firmament which yielded 'Adamah-- ground created and then, by the whim of that same creator, starved of rain. Schmidt, Trask, the CIA; they have countless precedents, and there will be myriad interchangeable monsters in ages to come. All of this speaks to a pattern, but one so cruel as to defy contemplation. Better that life and all constituent elements should be an accident, than to acknowledge the maniacal imbecile at the loom. 

 

Charles, who has felt Erik's frustration as though it is his own and _still_ refuses to see, asks, "Is there no room in you for hope?"

There's an agonizing blade of gentleness in the inquiry, and a lesser man might laugh to combat it. Lehnsherr choses silence and instinct, moving quickly to sit on the edge of the armchair, level with professor's patient gaze. The perch is merely functional; he makes no attempt to cover himself, and draws Xavier's wheelchair closer with a tendril of power whose thoughtless instinct is likely the only thing that saves him from censure. Those azure eyes narrow, peering fixedly at the older mutant's face, but the professor merely reorients the wheels by pivoting slightly. Not a withdrawal, but a realignment, leaving them face to face but not, thanks to the arm of the apparatus, quite knee to knee. 

Despite this show of defiance, Charles is still the first to look away. His face and the set of his shoulders are inscrutable, but Lehnsherr cannot imagine his own expression has betrayed anything either. Certainly not the vaunted optimism his lover desires. There's no telepathic contact either, though searching Erik's mind for hope would be equally fruitless. If it exists for him at all, it is not within. 

To answer, he clasps the younger mutant's hands more tightly, turning a little as he must to draw them close to his own chest. Head bowed and chapped lips reverent, Erik lays gentle, accusatory kisses on the sweet pulsings of the wrists.

For a few beats, the professor looks wounded, but he rallies with an infantryman's heavy sigh. Magneto has a moment to ponder which (both?) of them is most guilty of perpetuating this philosophical attrition. The cultured voice murmurs, with seemingly equal speculation, "If we hadn't met in Miami, you never would have known." 

There's no need to specify what, and Lehnsherr nods easily enough, his face a mask. He'd honed himself into a weapon, one with no life past that which it was intended to end. If not felled in the execution of his vengeance, he would have lived the rest of his likely limited days thinking himself a freak. He lets his own silence ask the question that naturally follows, frowning further when the reply still involves no mental touch. 

"No," Xavier says, in a voice that contains not the slightest bit of remorse. He frees one hand, but only to trace fingers lovingly through the older mutant's hair. Thoughtless, Erik leans into it, so profoundly grateful it almost chills him. "No, I wouldn't take it back. I couldn't stand for you to think your power is anything but a gift."

_'And do you always think yours a gift?'_ the metal bender wonders, unable to completely smother the thought. He doubts the telepath will respond, but still Erik leans forward to take those lips and stifle the possibility. Or rather, he presses his own mouth against the firm flesh and less familiar beard with all the violent submission of a penitent. 

 

Briefly, it seems Lehnsherr's gambit has failed. That the professor will withhold himself in every way possible, insist on ending the night only with unanswerable questions and arguments thick with the dust of years. Then, with a sigh to echo Erik's own relief, Charles melts-- melts and, in doing so, sets the metal-bender back to hopeless burning. He is a man who would drink down the entire incandescent ocean, if given half the chance. Indeed, it's the Botticelli lips that would yield first, too lush for the beard to truly hide their succulence, They thrust toward one another with impossible gravity. 

The position is somewhat awkward thanks to the professor's previous willful jockeying, but it is still far more than rewarding. Charles' hands roam Lehnsherr's bare shoulders eagerly, abandoning purchase in favor of continual caress. Those hot, insistent, but ultimately tender lips seduce Erik's tongue-- he's so primed that a chance brush of lengthened hair against his cheek provokes a frankly indecent moan. The professor's agile, articulate muscle slides against Lehnsherr's as though deliberately seeking something. Chasing, perhaps, the seed his lover swallowed so eagerly not so long ago. Shuddering with want, Erik takes care to process the associated images at the highest volume he can manage. If Charles won't listen deliberately, then let him overhear the growing coruscation of eroticism he inspires. There was a time when such things called almost irresistibly to the scholar, locking their minds together like moon-tide as they fed off one another's pleasure. 

In lieu of this, Magneto's hands capture and cup the younger man's skull, exploring Charles' hair. A silky, tactile paradise his fingers are quite reluctant to leave, though he is also aware that the satin robe is all that bars him from those dark and eager nipples. He must be careful, though, and gentle in his own way. Already, he can feel a hesitancy filtering through his lover's touch. He doesn't need to be a telepath to read Charles' tells-- the little tensings of muscle and bracing breaths that indicate a return to that precise reserve. Xavier brought him here, though. Having willingly entered the lion's den, the other man ought to know very well just how far Erik can go to untangle him from his seemingly omnipresent and often-- at least in his lover's mind-- unfathomable guilt. 

 

When he and Charles must part for breath, the metal-bender finds himself even more absorbed by the dark strands in which his fingers are entangled. They catch hints of heated-copper auburn in the dimming firelight, and Erik will burry his face in them before the night is through. The professor, breathing heavily, simply stares at him with hooded eyes; azure reduced to a mere rim by the void of pupils. Dragging in rough gasps of air, Lehnsherr presses their foreheads together in unspoken invitation: _'Take what you want.'_ His teeth grind together just slightly as his jaw clenches. After all the liberties Charles has taken tonight, does he honestly think it fair to make Erik _beg_?

Wincing, the telepath draws his lover's hands away from their languorous admiration of hair and skull. Erik has always been drawn the curve of the occipital and the ironically named atlas beneath it-- proper application of lips or fingers can make the professor melt. The seat of the soul, or so the Egyptians once said, and no one save Charles tempts Lehnsherr to believe something might be enthroned there. 

"You don't beg, my friend. Don't think me as delusional as all that," Xavier murmurs, looking down in a way that prevents Magneto from rejoicing in any kind of leverage. "If you persist in the psychic equivalent of shouting, I have little choice but to hear you. And, as you can imagine, I'm a bit out of practice."

"Yet you brought me here," Erik reminds, not bothering to examine why the hijacking of his own will should now feel like a trump card. There's no room in his voice for reproof, at any rate-- not while he's eyeing the younger man's form with concern. The professor has over-extended himself a great deal these past few days, particularly after years of eschewing the mental muscle in favor of the mobility Lehnsherr stole. Only a fool would think Charles' recent feats would not take a heavy tole but, by the same token, his performance even under this strain is a testament to the raw power within that mind. All of the old prompts spring to Erik's lips has though spoken only yesterday: have you eaten, how long were you in Cerebro, is McCoy out of his _verdammt_ mind? Questions he might once have asked with an arm already around the Englishman's shoulders, firm as iron but gently applied. Come away, rest, let me look at you. Instead, aware of his current precarious position, he offers, "You needn't have been so high-handed. I would have come, with only a word from you."  
They both tactfully ignore the actual likelihood of of such an entreaty, with its tacit admission of need.

 

Xavier smiles, but it could never be mistaken for a look of consolation or pleasure. The little chuckle that follows has the same wet quality as the one on the plane, when he acknowledged Erik's innocence in the same breath as the CIA's guilt. 

"You must believe me--"

"G-d help me, I do." With Erik's hands still in his grasp, the telepath kisses the knuckles, guiding svelte and deadly fingers to rest against his own neck and throat. The living warmth is drugging, but the pressure the younger mutant seems to encourage is alarming. 

" _Charles_ ," Lehnsherr says urgently. "What--"

"You were right. I have done a great deal these past few days, haven't I?" the professor muses aloud, seemingly addressing the room at large. "So much done, and still so far to go." Then, in a voice that belongs to Charles but is still palpably not quite his own, "So much time _wasted_." The scholar shivers slightly, with the convulsive depth of the genuinely disturbed. As if, so the old saying goes, someone just walked over his grave. 

Erik, never one to indulge the cryptic, focuses instead on the fact Xavier is biting his lip repeatedly-- a sure sign of stress. For the first time, he sees the smudgings of indigo beneath those vivid eyes and the slight tremble in the wide-palmed grasp as something other than simple symptoms of fatigue. Beneath the self-flagellating press of Charles' hands, he wills his own touch to become a caress. Focuses on the gentle hum of carotid, imagines the blood and constituent minerals leap a bit more readily at the contact. The telepath's abstraction is worrisome, and Erik is half-shamed to find his impulses divided between comfort and application of advantage. His overwhelming affection for Xavier always makes him even less inclined to play fair. 

 

Silence spins out between them, and Lehnsherr shifts restlessly, on the verge of grand impulsive action. Why should they be betrayed by words again? His is not the only form hungering for physical union, no more than he is the only one coveting the sphere he and Charles can create between themselves-- a consecration that blocks out the world. When they argue, they do not do so with their bodies; they use words, because they are masters at miscommunication. For all the professor is enamored with mundane speech, it is perhaps Erik who understands the true facts most keenly. They speak to one another in a second language, neither one of them natives to the English tongue. The thought is a mist-whisper in his own mind, but he is skin to skin with his _neshama_ , who will have no choice save to hear.

"Really, darling," Charles says, dry tone accompanied by a smile both tender and painful. "Must you persist in tempting me?"

Practically purring at having recaptured the telepath's attention, Lehnsherr murmurs, "Ah, _liebling_ , but you make such a beautiful Faust."

"Isn't casting yourself as the devil bit out of keeping with your theology?" Trying, as he so often does in distress, for sangfroid. And failing miserably.

Erik shrugs eloquently, "I've come to think the devil likely made the world."

"And you'll remake it?" Not a challenge, but a hollow echo.

 

It's probably extremely unwise to point out just how pivotal his actions in D.C. may prove, but that doesn't stop Erik from thinking it. However, rather than respond in anger, Charles looks at him with a sort of ashen desperation that immediately evokes Lehnsherr's old impulse to shelter and enfold. The barrier of the wheelchair is all that impedes him now, as the professor no doubt intended. 

"I'm equally guilty," Charles says, causing a tremor of surprise to run through the older mutant's form. "I'm angry with you-- absolutely furious, if you must know-- but I ultimately fell into the same trap. I violated so many of my own principles, and I did it on national television." So strong, those rower's arms slide up against Erik's own, completing as much of an embrace as physically possible. He holds onto the metal-bender so tightly he's on the verge of toppling out of his chair. 

 

"I'm afraid. Erik, I'm afraid we've made things _worse_." 

 

 

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [+] _Queen Sacrifice_ \- just what it sounds like: any play in chess that sacrifices the queen in order to gain a tactical advantage. There are 'sham' sacrifices (where the gain is obvious) and 'real' ones (where the advantage isn't obvious at first, but has an overall better outcome). I have a lot of trouble with Magneto's actions at the end of X2, mostly because they seem a little OOC in light of the comics. So, I would classify the sacrifice itself as a 'sham'-- it forces a checkmate, but what the hell did Erik think was going to happen afterwards? (Mind you, I learned chess from my brother and am almost always guaranteed to lose, so I'm no expert. ^^')
> 
> … still _relatively_ short notes. Huzzah?


End file.
